SAILING: Canfield weighs semifinal options

Decisions, decisions. Who will Taylor Canfield pick to race in today's semifinals of the Long Beach Yacht Club's Ficker Cup?

It may be Japan's Waturu Sakamoto and if Sakamoto were to win that match and ultimately the Ficker, would he collect a local crew to race in next week's 49th Congressional Cup, while tactician Laurie Jury takes the Japanese crew into the Congressional, as originally planned?

All of that was on the table late Saturday as the seven round robin and four best-of-three quarterfinal matches were completed, with Canfield on an eight-race win streak following his opening loss Friday to Scott Dickson, whose own streak was stopped by Sakamoto in the sixth round Saturday.

Canfield, Sakamoto and Dickson all finished the round robins with 6-1 records, and Canfield and Dickson then swept New Zealand's Colin Rathbun and Chicago's Peter Holz, respectively, out of the quarterfinals, 2-0, as did Long Beach's Dustin Durant with Australia's Jordan Reece. Sakamoto dropped Maine's Christopher Poole 2-1.

Canfield gets to choose his foe, but he was in no hurry as he and his crew kicked around the options over cold beer and snacks on the LBYC patio.

"We'll pick it (Sunday) morning," he said.

He has lost to Dickson but beaten Sakamoto and, oh, yeah, Durant - the 25-year-old defending Ficker champion.

While 3-4 in the round robins, Canfield and Dickson's teams appeared to be efficient Saturday in the rough and tumble desperation that had protest flags flying wilder and thicker than the seagulls over the Long Beach outer harbor.

"We were sailing the boat well," Durant said, although he trailed Holz early in the race after the opponent drew a pre-start penalty. "We were really slow on the first upwind leg, but on the second leg we started catching up, (knowing) we had a penalty on him."

When Holz dropped his spinnaker 200 meters from the finish to do a penalty turn, Durant rolled into the lead.